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Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco ACI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (4th), Microsegmentation Software (2nd)
Cisco ACI
Ranking in Cloud and Data Center Security
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud and Data Center Security category, the mindshare of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is 24.7%, up from 21.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco ACI is 5.7%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud and Data Center Security
 

Featured Reviews

KlavsThaarup - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers micro segmentation capabilities and easy to setup
It's micro-segmentation The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature. There are always areas for improvement. It doesn't support a PAAC solution (Platforma as a service) in the cloud. So that could be improved. In future releases, I would like to see more integration with other…
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides scalability, ease of migration for future DC moves, multi-tenancy and programmability
Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms. To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything. I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more. We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Guardicore makes its own rule set automatically, so we can work fast when creating a rule set."
"That is primarily because I've seen increased rules. It's kind of caught us a little off guard. With GuardiCore, I have had to deal with their technical support and engineering team in Israel. They are amazing. They are very quick to adapt."
"Guardicore Centra offers the best coverage specifically in backward compatibility with legacy operating systems."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its visibility."
"The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"This tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks."
"The solution is very scalable, especially when connected to the cloud resources."
"Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features."
"The best part of Cisco ACI is the server deployment and integration."
"This solution is easy to configure, and it is done in an object-oriented manner."
"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."
"With its programmability, you can do stuff to policies to make them more flexible, allowing you to connect devices in new ways."
"The stability is perfect. We have had no problems with Cisco ACI."
"ACI's most valuable feature is its SDN capabilities. Everything is on your software design controller. Everything is blocked by default until you allow it."
"Once we have it running, it should be easier for us to program our IT rather than going case-by-case, by switches and different elements, or program it by hand."
"We can support policy based on our intent, then that gets rendered into the policy that we will be using for Fabric."
 

Cons

"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."
"It would be very helpful for beginners if the solution had more windows to help with the terms inside instead of going to the documentation."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten, where one is low and ten is high stability."
"Guardicore Centra should incorporate automation so that we don't require to write custom scripts and APIs. The tool also has limitations on rules where it allows only sixty thousand rules. Our clients have also commented that there are too many manual clicks and effort to do changes. I think that the incorporation of automation can help our clients make changes with confidence and without the possibility of human error."
"Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it."
"Needs more customization of honeypots and a vaster catalog of systems able to be mimicked."
"The product needs a few features like enhanced user policies and payload-level inspection to improve the offering."
"The dashboard needs improvement. It should be more flexible so that I can easily see what I want or need to see."
"Cisco ACI is a highly complex solution. The initial deployment is just a few clicks, but understanding how an ACI works and interacts with routing, switching, and virtualization takes a lot of knowledge. The interface isn't necessarily hard to use, but the technology is complicated. If you want to understand how it works and how to configure it, you should study hard."
"So far we've had very few issues, a couple of routing things that were glitches within ACI."
"It is still not mature and has room to grow. As with any product out there, it requires time to develop."
"They should improve the GUI, make it simpler. They also need to improve its integration with other automation tools."
"We are waiting to see what happens with the cloud. We want to see if it will scale better."
"Cisco should provide more examples of code in their website. Something that other people can use. There is a great place in the development area."
"The firewall has room for improvement because there is no central inspection yet on Cisco ACI."
"It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."
"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."
"The pricing is too high."
"The price is the same as other products in the market. There's no price argument to choose one or the other product, it will cost the customer approximately the same."
"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."
"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"Guardicore Centra provides better value for money than NSX, was the other solution that we looked at, which was too expensive for what it does."
"The customer would complain about the cost."
"There are no additional costs. We only have to pay for a support contract apart from the license."
"Pricing for Cisco ACI could be expensive if you're not a gold partner. If you're a gold partner, you'll get reasonable pricing, but to become a gold partner, you must cross several layers. For example, at least twenty engineers within your organization have to be certified, with each certification priced at £2,000 minimum, so this would make some companies think twice about the product. If you're going for Aruba and Juniper products, on the other hand, you can quickly get the partner status, and you can start selling the product. As a gold partner, you can get up to seventy percent discount on Cisco ACI, for example, while an ordinary partner gets ten percent off. Cisco ACI is expensive for both customers and partners, but I'm rating pricing for the product as four out of five because even if the price is costly, you get a lot of benefits from the product. Cisco ACI isn't the best, price-wise, but it's still a good solution. If you're in a small organization, you may be unable to afford it. Cisco ACI is best for enterprises but not SMBs because Cisco ACI and its required resources are expensive."
"We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is pretty good for new technology."
"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"The licensing cost for ACI is expensive - I would rate its price 2.5 out of five."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Guardicore Centra?
I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. I know other micro-segmentation tools like Cisco or Illumio, and so I think they are in the middle.
What do you like most about Guardicore Infection Monkey?
Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy and found that they really stood out from other vendors. It allows us to see mi...
What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?
When we have more than one interface, we can only have one policy for both interfaces. Normally, you have assets with a production interface and a server interface that are only for management. But...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about Cisco ACI?
The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution.
 

Also Known As

Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE
Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco ACI and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.